What Does Informatics Mean?

We here, in the Informatics Division (later renamed the Department of
Informatics, and now called the School of Informatics), have taken the
opportunity to define the word to suit our own conglomeration of
computer science, artificial intelligence, cognitive science,
etc.. Unfortunately we are not the first to have taken the opportunity
to define the word. If we step outside English, there is the long
established French Informatique which has led to coinages in
other European languages. Earlier English definitions emphasised the
science of library automation and scientific database
construction aspects, as in medical informatics.

As a personal note on this very general theme, I have long felt that
computer science was guilty of over-simplifying the computer, and that
nobody really had a good handle on the full nature and implications of
these interesting devices. Symptoms of the inadequacy of our current
understanding are that it was possible for John Searle to assert, and
be believed by many well educated computer scientists, that it is
impossible to get semantics from syntax, i.e., that computers are
purely syntactical engines, and that there is a serious problem
(e.g. the symbol grounding problem of Stevan Harnad) in somehow
bootstrapping semantics into these things, before we can proceed with
using them as the brains of robots, etc..

I'm pleased to note that Brian Cantwell Smith, who has long been
puzzled by these issues, has returned from a long trek in the
wilderness with a book The Origin of Objects which I think starts to repair these
deficiencies in the right way. From quite another starting point,
David Deutsch in The
Fabric of Reality suggests that

"There are four main strands of
scientific explanation: quantum theory, evolution, computation, and
the theory of knowledge. The four of them taken together form a
coherent explanatory structure that is so far-reaching, and has come
to encompass so much of our understanding of the world, that in my
view it may already properly be called the first Theory of
Everything."

In other words, the theory of computation, allied with
the theory of knowledge, is one of the fundamental elementary
components of a scientific explanation of the universe, as fundamental
as quantum theory, and not some remote twig on the scientific
reductionism tree, to be reached by clambering via evolution from
physics to chemistry to biochemistry to physiology to neurophysiology
to psychology to -- at last, a theory of knowledge. I mention this
because it has a bearing on what I think ``Informatics'' ought
to mean, once we've got our philosophical and terminological act
together, i.e., one of the fundamental elementary explanatory threads
of the universe.

``Informatics is the study of the application of computer and
statistical techniques to the management of information.'' The most
common basic definition in English dictionaries, often cited by
academic web sites who use "Informatics" to describe an apsect of
their work.

WWWebster gives ``Informatics'' as a 1967 synonym for the 1960 term
``Information Science'' : the collection, classification, storage,
retrieval, and dissemination of recorded knowledge treated both as a
pure and as an applied science.

The Macquarie Dictionary: informatics : a discipline of science which
investigates the structure and properties of scientific information as
opposed to the content. 2. computer science. [translation of
Russ. informatika; informat(ion) + -ics]

The Computational Sciences Dept of George Mason University:
``Informatics is defined as the design and implementation of complex
hardware and software systems for the extraction of knowledge from
large databases.''

Department of Informatics, Umea University, Sweden: ``The academic
discipline of Informatics overlaps with the areas which are
internationally known as information management, information systems,
management information systems, human-computer interaction,
computer-supported cooperative work, decision support systems, and
computer science. It is concerned with the improvement of systems
design and of the use of interactive computer support of work,
business, private activities, and public services. It includes
description of professional activities, analysis of information
requirements and guidelines for prototyping, technical requirements
specifications, user-oriented documentation, and evaluation of
capabilities for use of computer networks. Major concerns are
human-computer interaction for the design, use, and redesign of
computer artefacts, the transitions between natural and formal
languages as embodied in the artefacts and their use, and the
prerequisites for the successful operation, and evaluation of effects
of computerized support of activities affecting users, markets, and
citizens, where teamwork, personal judgement and experience are
important.''

From the OED: Informatics:

1967 FID News Bull XVII 73/2: Informatics is the discipline of science
which investigates the structure and properties (not specific content)
of scientific information, as well as the regularities of scientific
information activity, its theory, history, methodology, and
organisation.

1970 Times 2 Sept 9: It was agreed ... that an introduction to
Informatics should form an integral part of general education.

1972: Jrnl Librarianship IV 177: the name Informatics satisfies
several criteria for the designation of a new discipline.

1973 Times Lit Supp 28 Sept 1133/1: the problem falls
into two parts: the preparation of decisions, which is a matter of
informatics, and the making of the decisions themselves, which is a
matter of "politics".